42 Report on Building Stone of New York. 



At Towner's Four Corners, in Putnam county, marble is quarried 

 for common walls and foundations. 



The marble quarries in the town of Dover were worked vigorously 

 about forty years ago : the product was grave-stones mainly. The 

 quarries are shallow excavations, and unlike the deep, underground 

 quarries in Vermont. And the stone from these upper beds is prob- 

 ably not as solid and compact as that from deeper workings would 

 be, nor as free from seams. Old analyses show it to be a dolomitic 

 stone. But what portions may be less magnesian or even pure lime- 

 stone is not known. Generally the stone is fine-grained, and much 

 of it from the surface crumbles down to a granular mass on long ex- 

 posure. It is not as coarse-crystalline as the Westchester county 

 marbles. 



New Lebanon, Columbia County. — The marble quarries in this 

 town were opened about fifty years ago. But they have been 

 abandoned for many years. 



Gouverneur, St. Lawrence Co. — At Governeur there are two 

 companies at work quarrying marble — the St. Lawrence Marble 

 Company and the Whitney Marble Company. Their works and quar- 

 ries are located south-west of the village, about one mile distant. The 

 St. Lawrence Marble Company's quarry is on the east side of the 

 Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg railroad line. This quarry was 

 opened in 1878. The quarry is 100 x 90 feet and 70 feet deep, and 

 at the side there is an additional area of 90 x 50 feet, from which 

 the earth has been removed, leaving the marble ready for quarrying. 

 The beds have a dip of 22°, and west of north. At the top the stone 

 is light gray, the bottom is dark blue (resembling, when dressed, 

 some of the gray granites). Both varieties are coarse-crystalline. 

 At the junction of the two there are some impurities, due to a 

 foreign admixture of mica and brown tourmaline and, rarely, pyrite, 

 but this impure stone is thrown out as waste. The stone is very solid 

 but splits most readily in the lines of the bedding. It is readily 

 dressed, and is said to cut more easily than the Sutherland Falls 

 marble, but it is not as soft as that of Rutland, Vermont. The 

 crystalline rock, where uncovered, shows deep glacial furrows and 

 smooth and polished surfaces. The covering of earth varies from a 

 few inches to twelve feet in thickness. The stone is cut out by 

 channelling machines, and the quarry proper may be said to be a 

 rectangular pit, whose sides are nearly vertical. Very little water is 

 met with in the quarry. Steam power is used for raising the water. 



